


War is Over

by falafelfiction



Category: Breaking Bad
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-17
Updated: 2014-01-17
Packaged: 2018-01-09 02:32:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,730
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1140396
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/falafelfiction/pseuds/falafelfiction
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Madness fill for the prompt <i> 'Jesse’s first Christmas, post-Felina. Preferably with snow.' </i> A few weeks after escaping the Nazi compound, Jesse spends Christmas in a homeless shelter.</p>
            </blockquote>





	War is Over

**Author's Note:**

  * For [biblionerd07](https://archiveofourown.org/users/biblionerd07/gifts).



> Thanks to my mystery beta.

 

“You planning to sleep the day away, buddy?”

Jesse rubbed his eyes and peaked out from beneath his blanket.

There was an old dude in a Santa costume crouching beside the lower tier of the bunk bed. Jesse flinched as he remembered that photo in the Schrader house; the picture of Mr White wearing that same red suit and snowy white beard. _Mr White’s dead_ , Jesse reminded himself, as he always had to remind himself. The man who was squatting down by his bed was just some nice old dude who worked at the homeless shelter.

He held open his Santa sack, encouraging Jesse to reach inside.

“Go on, son…” said Santa, “Take something. It’s just donations, I’m afraid. There’s not much left. I gave out most of my gifts earlier this morning.”

Jesse glanced up at the clock on the wall. It was almost noon. He didn’t usually get to lie in bed so long. The shelter kicked them out midmorning and they weren’t invited back in until dinner time. But just yesterday there had been all these blizzard warnings so it had been decided that they could stay inside the shelter through Christmas day, using it as a warming refuge. The bed that Jesse had been assigned in the dormitory was pretty much the best present that he could have hoped for this year. He still had so many sleepless nights to recover from.  

“Wow, _thanks_...” said Jesse, fishing a small square gift from Santa’s near empty sack. He propped himself up on his elbows and unwrapped it.  

It was a Rubik’s cube, its tiles all chipped and out of place.    

“Sorry,” said Santa with a wincing smile. “I know it’s not much.”

“Nah man,” said Jesse. “This is perfect. Totally perfect.”

Santa patted Jesse’s arm and then moved onto the other bunks. Jesse climbed out of bed and stretched. Upon waking it always took him a few moments to believe that he was really here, that he had actually escaped…and just a few weeks before Christmas.     

The night he had fled the compound Jesse had driven through till the early hours of the morning on Interstate 25. He had got as far as Wyoming when the sun was rising and he was running low on gas. That was when Jesse had decided to ditch the car, pitching it into the fast flowing Laramie River. He had removed the hubcaps first and sold them at a garage in town for enough money to buy himself a hot meal and a shower at the local swimming pool and a second-hand coat from the Salvation Army store. It was one of the store volunteers who had given Jesse directions to the shelter and probably saved him from freezing to death on the stone cold streets. A harsh winter wind had followed Jesse up north.

Jesse wandered the dormitory, weaving through the tiny aisles between the crammed bunk beds. A few of the residents who were still lounging their beds raised their heads as he passed and wished him a ‘Happy Christmas’. Others kept their faces buried in their pillows, making no sound, because it couldn’t really be a happy Christmas for anyone who had ended up here. It wouldn’t a happy time for most of those people that Jesse had left behind in New Mexico either. It would be Brock’s first Christmas without his mom. It would be Mrs Schrader’s first Christmas without her husband. The White family’s first Christmas without Walt too, though Jesse imagined that last one would come as more of a relief.

Jesse was relieved too because, well…it could have been worse. The best Christmas he could have imagined at the compound would’ve consisted of being left alone in his cage and maybe having Todd lower a few scraps of turkey to him in the bucket. This Christmas wasn’t happy but it hurt less than it could have. For Jesse, life being less painful was the closest he could get to life being good. And for now, that was close enough.  

 _Yes_. It was over. He was free. Mr White was dead. And that was enough.

“You want to come into the TV room, Jesse?” asked another of the shelter's volunteers, a curly-haired and heavyset woman dressed as Mrs Claus. “ _It’s a Wonderful Life_ is starting in five minutes. It’s an oldie but a goodie if you’ve never seen it before.” 

“No, thank you…I’m good,” said Jesse. He held up his Rubik’s cube. “I’ve got this thing to rearrange. Is…is it okay if I just sit over by the window?”

“Of course it is, hon,” she said. “You don’t have to ask.”

Mrs Claus shook her head at him and turned back into the TV room. Jesse was still stuck in the habit of asking permission for even the smallest things. It was going to be a while before he got used to having free will again, despite the fact that everyone at the shelter was being so nice to him. They knew that his name was ‘Jesse’. He’d been too exhausted on arrival to think up a false name, even though they hadn’t asked him for any proof of identity. They could surely tell from his unkempt appearance and his grizzly collection of scars that he was escaping from some sort of dark past, but they didn’t question him about it. Instead they’d offered him tea, hand sanitizer and reassuring smiles. When they had asked him to sign in at reception Jesse'd had the sense to adjust his last name at least...

Occupant of Bed 82: _Jesse Freeman_.   

Jesse knew that his alias was pretty lame. During his first few days at the shelter, Jesse kept expecting someone to figure it out, to recognize him and to call the cops. But the news was never on in the TV room, not during the festive season. For the last two weeks the residents had been playing nothing but Christmas specials, family films and carol concerts. There was enough sadness in the shelter without reminding its residents of all the other miseries out in the world. When Jesse did visit to the local newsstands to get the latest headlines on the Heisenberg story, most articles didn’t even mention his name. The ones that did all used the words _‘missing, presumed dead’_ close behind it. Nobody cared to look for Jesse Pinkman it seemed, either his living fugitive self or his murdered corpse.   

Which was fine with Jesse Freeman. His old self being forgotten suited him just fine.

Jesse sat down on the window ledge and drank in the view beyond the glass. The towering grey slopes of Casper Mountain and the snow-cloaked town below. This was what he had always imagined Alaska must look like. Jesse had missed his TV for sure, but he had missed the outside world even more. The only views that he’d had at the compound were of dank concrete walls or rusty riveted metal. Todd hadn’t let him look at the stars again after his escape attempt. Jesse was surprised by how he had to come to crave the vastness and splendour of the natural world. He felt like he could sit here and watch the world go by all day.

And it wasn’t just the world Jesse was watching. He had left a little friend standing out in the blizzard...the snowman that he had spent several hours building on Christmas Eve. He hadn’t made a snowman since he was a kid. He’d forgotten the effort that it took, but he had persevered, packing and piling up the snow until his creation stood at the same height as him. Jesse had woven thin wet branches together to make him a hat and scarf and the shelter had given him some coal for his eyes and buttons. His snowman was still standing firm against the weather, even though it was taking quite a beating from fierce winds and hail flurries.      

Time slipped gently by as Jesse sat at the window, watching the snow swirl and daydreaming of climbing that mountain in the spring. He twisted the Rubik’s cube in his hands and slowly but surely he grouped each of its six colours into perfect squares.

After a while, Mr and Mrs Claus left the TV room and made their way towards the kitchen. Jesse got up and followed them to the serving hatch. He had slept through breakfast but he’d heard they were going to be having a big dinner later that afternoon. 

“Hey...do you need any help?” Jesse asked.

Mrs Claus was tying an apron over her red dress. She looked up at him and smiled. Jesse couldn’t remember the woman’s name, but she always smiled at him. All the shelter workers really seemed to like him, but then of course...they didn’t know that Jesse was a drug dealer and a murderer who had ruined countless people’s lives back in his home state.

Maybe here…Jesse had the chance to be something more.  

“Well, we wouldn’t say no,” said Mrs Claus, beckoning him into kitchen. “We’ve ended up with only a skeleton crew here today. The big group who had been planning to come from the church won’t be risking the roads in this weather…”

“You got any cooking experience, son?” Santa asked him.

Jesse forced a smile. “Yeah…you could say that.”  

Santa smiled back and gave Jesse a large bowl of carrots to wash and peel. The volunteers at the homeless shelter had been saying they were going to help Jesse to find some work in the New Year. Nothing fancy, just selling papers and picking up litter, that kind of stuff. Jesse didn’t know how he’d ever get a real job. He didn’t know how he’d get a place of his own to live. He didn’t know how he’d keep himself out of jail or a nuthouse. He didn’t know if he’d ever really feel happy or whether the days ahead would hurt any less.

But then…yesterday Jesse had built a snowman.

And today Jesse had solved a Rubik’s cube.

A few weeks ago Jesse never would've hoped that he would get to do either of those things. So really…who could tell what tomorrow might bring? And whatever it was, it had to be something better, right? _Right._

 

 _The End_  


End file.
